The 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change maps out the impacts of climate change, and the necessary policy responses, to ensure the highest attainable standards of health for populations worldwide. This Commission is multidisciplinary and international, with strong collaboration between academic centres in Europe and China. The central finding from the Commission is that tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century.

The Climate Commission has released its second major report, The Critical Decade: Climate change and health. The report is a comprehensive and up to date synthesis of the expected impacts of climate change on the health of Australians.

The Australian Conservation Foundation’s GreenClinic program assists doctors and practice managers to identify simple changes they can make in their clinics to save energy and water, reduce waste, and help their patients and communities to live more sustainable and healthy lives.

The Australian Conservation Foundation’s GreenHome Program is a pioneering environmental education program that works with communities to find individual and collective solutions to environmental issues.

GreenHome helps people help the environment by making simple changes to the way we live. Identify ways that you can green your home and lifestyle, from saving energy and water to cutting down on waste.

Doctors for the Environment Australia aims to utilise the skills of members of the medical profession to address the ill health resulting from damage to the natural environment at local, national and global levels. Our concerns range from the health aspects of climate change to the environmental aspects of children’s health and to the local cardio-respiratory effects of transport pollution.

CAHA is a coalition of Australian organisations and individuals including health care professionals, health care service providers, institutions, academics, researchers, and health care consumers. The Alliance aims to contribute to the development and implementation of evidence based public policy to protect the community from the adverse consequences of climate change, and promote recognition that policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment have the potential to bring important public health benefits.

The Climate and Health Council takes the firm stance that health professionals – doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, all of us – can, should, and must take meaningful action on climate change. Protecting public health is our duty in society. It is what we do best. It is what brings us together as a profession in our clinic, our surgeries, our hospitals, or wherever we may be.

Climate change already affects human health, and, if no action is taken, problems such as malnutrition, deaths and injury due to extreme weather conditions, and change in geographical distribution of disease vectors will worsen. This Series is the result of an international collaboration of scientists supported by a consortium of funding bodies coordinated by the Wellcome Trust, UK.

United Nations Environment Program – UNEP – Environment for development: Aims to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.

With the world confronting a host of major crises relating to climate, energy, severe poverty, food, the global economy and political instability, why should anyone be concerned about population? The simple answer is that virtually all of the major problems that confront the world today relate in some critical way to population growth.

While public concern about rapid population growth has subsided in recent decades, world population is still growing at about 80 million people a year. If current trends persist, there will 2.5 billion more people on the planet by mid-century, bringing the total to about 9.2 billion. That projected population growth raises a host of questions about the future of humanity and the planet we inhabit.